Autonomy as Process and Outcome: Revisiting Cultural and Practical Issues in Motivation for Counseling

Three commentators (Carter, 2011; Kim, 2011; Scheel, 2011) concurred with a central proposition of the target article (Ryan, Lynch, Vansteenkiste, & Deci, 2011): that client motivation for counseling is of critical importance to counselors and therapists. In this Reply, we acknowledge and address a number of issues raised by the commentators, including the role of motivation and autonomy in multicultural counseling, the issue of common factors in counseling, and how the continuum of motivation proposed in the target article relates to the experience of practitioners who are engaged with a wide variety of client presentations. We maintain that the autonomous motivation of clients is a legitimate focus in counseling, both as process and outcome, and that an autonomy-supportive stance on the part of the counselor is implicit in the ethical mandate to respect the person of the client.